I've been busy this week starting work on a new system. It won't be totally new, as I will be recycling some hardware. I've spent the better half of this year overclocking and tweaking to no end. This system was designed to be powerful, but most importantly quiet. It'd be nice to hear myself think while I'm doing homework.
Nothing says style and power better than the PowerMac G5, so that has been my inspiration so far:
I ordered just an empty case on ebay. Got it for an affordable $138. Not bad for an aluminum case. Lian Li's and Coolermaster cases can be much more expensive, and not look nearly as good. The best part about the case is that it came with a PSU and all the internal Mac wiring. I will be able to sell this stuff on eBay and get most of my money back.
You know your case will have great airflow when you can see right though it
After gutting the case, the first step was to dremel the motherboard standoffs. If you've ever scene the inside of a PowerMac, the motherboard is as wide as the whole case. The standoffs were almost an inch tall, and are build directly into the motherboard tray. My only option was to use a cutoff wheel and chop them off.
Since the standoffs were so tall, I had to start building up the back of the case to support the new motherboard tray. I bought a bulk pack of Dynamat Xtreme on eBay. While I've found noise dampening to be fairly pointless in the past, every little but helps so I decided to go with it. This picture is after the first layer, just to get an idea. 4 more layers were added before I installed the new motherboard tray.
A picture of the new motherboard tray. It was cut from a 24" x 48" x 1/16" sheet of aluminum, also ordered from eBay.
The new motherboard tray installed over the dynamat. I've also continued slowly adding the dynamat to the rest of the system. It's a boring job, so I don't do very much at once.
A picture of the back of the Mac chassis stripped of all components before I had my way with it.
A dremel, reinforced cutoff wheel and 3 minutes later and there's a nice hole that will be the new home of the custom I/O panel to be added later. This evening I had to make this hole a little larger than what is pictured here. to allow the new I/O panel enough room to be installed.
The new motherboard tray is not ATX compliant.
A better picture of the new standoffs. I used Arctic Silver Epoxy to attach them to the motherboard tray. Bad idea. Great thermal conductivity, bad as a true epoxy. I just had a couple tubes of it laying around so I figured I'd put it to use. I've since added more high strenght epoxy to the standoffs to make sure they hold the weight of the system.
These pics are a couple days old, so I'll post some more up to date ones tomorrow. So far the project is moving along nicely. I've scene a few PowerMac mods in some different forums, but so far they've all looked like crap. I hope to do a better job. There are still a few things, primarily the installation of the DVD Burner that I have no idea how I'm going to do it. Maybe some inspiration will come in my sleep...that's how I figured out the I/O panel.
Apple PowerPC (56K)
. I'm waiting for my RMA'ed 165 though. The G5 looks awesome btw.
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